This is actually a pretty hard one for me not to break my own rules on. As you may or may not know, part of the idea of this series is to look at how a story can be fixed rather than rebuilt. The Phantom Menace series, for instance, stuck with more or less the same plot while tinkering with the characters in such a way that would have allowed for more audience investment in it. And that worked because while Phantom Menace was bloated and at times meandering, there were good ideas behind all of its scenes that just failed to materialize due to poor direction and dialog.

Star Trek Generations, on the other hand, does not have quite the same weight in its core ideas. The film is ostensibly about coming to terms with the passage of time and the change it brings. We know this because characters often stop the movie in its tracks to tell us all about it. But for a movie in this particular franchise, I honestly feel it’s too small of a concept to build an entire film around on its own.

Wrath of Khan had arguably the same arc for Kirk. But that wasn’t the entirety of what the film was either. You had Khan’s revenge, the Genesis program, the trainees, and I could go on but won’t because there are still one or two people who haven’t seen the film yet (and the rest don’t need me to.) Not to mention having what are still the best scenes of starship battles the franchise has produced. It was a pretty full movie. Generations though… Well, it could have been a great episode, but as a film it’s hard for me to get excited about the idea of Picard being worried that he’s too old to be interesting anymore.

So this leaves me with a problem: how do I take a script whose biggest problem may be that it’s just too small for the big screen and broaden its scope without replacing the ideas that form its core identity?

There’s no question that among Science Fiction fandoms, the Star Trek contingent is a force unto themselves. They are frighteningly passionate, opinionated, and fractious. And yet there are a few things that they can agree on. Namely: that some of the movies are pretty bad. And among the bad, there is one that stands out. One which, as a followup to the previous masterful film, was disappointing enough to dash the hopes of everyone who went to watch. And that film is:

Cyberpunk in the 90’s was a special kind of madness. Technology for mobile phones, the internet, and robotic prostheses was just starting to take off in a big way. Everyone seemed certain that virtual reality and cybernetic implants were just around the corner. And, best of all, none of those technologies had matured enough for people to realize that the ideas they’d always had about what those things would look like were batshit crazy. The result was a pastiche of techno-babble and nonsense that has never quite faded away. Which unfortunately means that there are probably still people trying to figure out a way to make the insane concepts that characterize 90’s cyberpunk into a reality. You might want to keep this list of signs that you’re starting to slip into that insanity handy, just in case…

There have been a lot of advances in theoretical physics since the end of the 19th century when the first examples of what I would consider “modern” time travel stories were being produced by Mark Twain and H.G. Wells. One of the best of those in my opinion is the multiple worlds theory of quantum physics, largely because it finally offers us a chance to break away from the constraints of the paradox that have plagued science fiction for so long.
In the universe of the Shadows of Time series, there are no temporal paradoxes to contend with. This is because it is flat out impossible for them to exist. The main characters exist within a 11 dimensional omniverse where all possible outcomes of their time travel are accounted for. Now, as individuals who exist outside of the normal flow of any single universe, they do have the ability to flit in and out of several different universes as they see fit. But it is beyond their power to create anything truly new. The law of conservation of energy dictates that their ability is inherently finite.
Furthermore, the Guardians themselves are not unique. The very nature of the setting demands that there be innumerable copies of them all running around simultaneously, operating in near ignorance of each other simply because of the fact that as many versions of them as there are, there are far more possible destinations for them to be shunted to. And while there may occasionally be things that look like paradoxes where they are reacting to something done by themselves in the future, they’re actually the result of other iterations of them taking action. So not only is there no paradox, but oftentimes they’re left stymied by the fact that these other iterations made different choices than they would given the same circumstances.
I’ll admit that when I first decided to go this route for my books, I was hesitant. While the idea of being able to write in a universe free of the decrepit specter of temporal paradoxes was appealing, it seemed at first that the omniverse posed just as many problems. There seemed to be an inherent nihilism to the concept that I found to be abhorrent. After all, with constant reminders that there were near infinite other copies of my protagonists making different choices and living (or dying) under different circumstances, what incentive would my readers have to care about what happened to the one group I chose to follow? Furthermore, how would I address the concern of dual occupancy? After all, with so many near identical Guardians operating with impunity, surely it was inevitable that eventually two or two million sets of them would decide to go to the same universe.
So my initial response to the problem was to cheat, and basically try to fudge the logic a bit by elevating the Guardians as being somehow special. In the early drafts of Shadows of Time the Guardians were unique because there could only ever be one set of them at any given time. All the other iterations that existed were simply held in reserve so they could be rotated in as needed when one of them ended up dying . I don’t think it was an entirely bad concept. In fact I adapted it into another unrelated project later. But it still ended up causing too many problems for me. Every time I asserted this in the book, a little demon in the back of my head would pipe up and ask “So, does that mean that whenever they make a choice, there are an infinite number of universes where they simply vanish all of a sudden? And doesn’t that also mean that the starting point of the universe would have to be defined as the point where they became Guardians?” and so on.
I ignored the demon for a long time until I suddenly one day had an epiphany. There’s a reason that time travel remains such an appealing concept for us, even after it’s been demonstrated that a practical application will likely forever be out of our reach. It speaks to feelings everyone has experienced at some point in their life: guilt and regret. It offers a chance to go back, to correct our past mistakes, and basically just have things turn out the way we wanted them to. A key part of the human experience is the eventual coming to terms with the fact that ultimately there’s no way for us to do that.
Time travel offers us a way to cheat that. Now, I’ll admit, highlighting this is one thing that the paradox approach has done rather well. It dangles time travel in front of our noses, always whisking it away at the last second because our past is just that. The problem is that this really doesn’t work for an ongoing series where I have characters repeatedly going back to different eras.
By embracing the problems of the omniverse I found they stopped being problems and started being stylistic elements. In the face of that pseudo-nihilist existence, there really is no way for the characters to fool themselves into thinking they can make their own lot better by meddling in their own past. They can tweak history all they want, but at the end of the day they still have to go home to live with the choices that they made. The ultimate promise of time travel then is revealed to have been a cheat all along.
Now some might call me on this by pointing out that in some cases this is exactly the same kind of message that writers seek to convey through the paradox mechanic. However I still maintain that there is a difference. The conventional paradox story always at some point presents the audience with something that is wholly nonsensical and tries to pass this off as complexity. In this way it is very similar to some philosophers I’ve known who, when losing an argument, have attempted to undermine their opponents position by claiming that the concepts they are quite eloquently explaining are simply too far beyond human comprehension for anyone to understand.
The omniverse, however, does not have this problem. Furthermore, by placing several existing paradox stories within an omniverse, many of the problems with said stories can be resolved, and in some cases even made more interesting by the shift.
I present as an example one of the single worst offenders in recent history: Star Trek Voyager. During her seven year stint as the Flying Dutchman of starships, Voyager was responsible for the absolute worst time travel plots that the Star Trek franchise has ever seen. What’s even worse is that the writers seemed to be aware of it, often having the characters point out all the plot holes they were creating only to have another character chuckle and say in a sage voice that time travel is supposed to be complicated.
To which I say: bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.
Let’s consider one of the worst of the bunch: the episode Time and Again. In this episode Kes, the resident quasi-Q (every starship seems to have one in the 24th century) detects the death of an entire planet. When Voyager goes to investigates Janeway and Tuvok are accidentally sent back to the same planet a few days before the cataclysm that will ultimately destroy every person on its surface occurs. Horror of horrors! Since they have nothing better to do, the two decide their best bet is to prevent the explosion from happening. This seems rather easy, as they’ve traced it back to a particular power generating MacGuffin which is apparently known to wipe out planetary populations when someone sneezes on the controls. That seems to be a bit of a design flaw to me, but I bet it’s got a great carbon footprint.
Meanwhile in the future, the rest of Voyager’s crew is working on trying to figure out how to get Janeway and Tuvok back. They come up with a system involving some kind of wormhole (though they wrap it in newer sounding tech talk) and start opening up portals everywhere just a few seconds too late to catch them. At the climax of the episode, Janeway is inside the power plant trying to stop a terrorist group from sneezing the wrong way and ending the world. A bunch of people, including Tuvok, are dead because she was trying her hardest to keep them out of this place. Only she suddenly discovers that the terrorist group is not, in fact, genocidal. They know full well that blowing up the power plant would end the world. Then the wormhole opens up behind her and starts moving in a menacing fashion towards a conduit. This being Star Trek, the conduit is apparently lined with C-4 and absolutely vital to the safe and non-explosive operation of the entire facility.
Janeway suddenly realizes that it was the rescue attempt of her crew that caused the explosion in the first place, not this bunch of loonies. She adopts her best “Captain face” and fires on the wormhole, blowing up the device on the other end and probably killing most of her command staff. This doesn’t matter though, because suddenly a bright white light sweeps over everyone and everything, and we cut back to Voyager going on her merry way. Kes wakes up again, then calls the bridge and declares that everyone’s fine. Which has got to be really, really annoying to everyone up there who is now probably thinking that Kes has been growing some really good space-weed in her hydroponic garden. The episode ends on a message of… what, exactly?
I know this is a little low, but this episode is a perfect example of all that is wrong with time travel stories these days. If Voyager was the cause of the explosion and had no reason to visit the planet in the first place (which, by the way, it didn’t) then the explosion never should have happened, and Kes never should have woken up in a cold sweat. That kind of absurdity should be reasons to can the script right there. And yet the episode revels in it. In fact, there really isn’t anything else this episode is about. There’s no attempt at a greater message, no attempt at any kind of commentary on humanity, society, or bad science fiction tropes. Even the somewhat interesting premise of eco-terrorists accidentally ending the world because they’re just as reckless as the people they’re trying to stop is nullified in the end because, what do you know, they’re arguably the only sane ones here. All there is to the episode is forty five minutes of self-indulgence where the writer tries to brag to the audience about how clever they are by being able to warp their minds like that. Sadly, even that falls flat.
Now let’s apply the omniverse model. In this version, the planet is destroyed by something (like, say, someone coming in sick and sneezing on a glowy thing or two toilets being flushed at exactly the same time) and Voyager comes to investigate. They get caught up in the after effects, Janeway and Tuvok get sucked in, etc. Finally, at the end of the story, Janeway fires on the rift and closes it, killing most of her command crew in the process. Yay, we’ve reduced the senior staff to a hologram who is still about a season away from becoming awesome and Harry Kim.
Of course, the problem is that Janeway has now basically ensured that the universe she now occupies will never become the one where her Voyager is currently in orbit and Harry Kim is wondering how he’s going to break it to the crew that he’s the captain now without causing a mass scramble to the escape pods. Are you honestly going to tell me that she isn’t making more of a sacrifice here? That the conflict isn’t more interesting, more worth exploration, than the original anemic version? You could even tack a happy ending on it by having Voyager show up in orbit, perhaps end on a close-up of the other Janeway watching this new universe’s version of her and her crew and shedding a “single tear™” of joy before turning away and setting out to build a new life for herself on this world she has saved. Or take it a step further, have her sent even further back in time, and have Voyager arrive after she’s lived a long full life on the planet’s surface. Sure, it’s still a bad episode. But at least now it’s one that features some form of lasting character development.
And really I can’t think of anything that could do a better job selling this idea than that. Adopting the multiverse brings consequences back into the equation. It requires the characters live with their choices, however they turned out, rather than wiping them away in order to return to the status quo. And why wouldn’t we want that? Choices should always matter in a story, otherwise you might as well just drop the whole thing.

(NOTE: I wrote this article a few years ago, so some of the references may be a bit old.)

As a writer of fiction which involves time travel as one of its core elements, I have had more than my fair share of questions from friends and readers regarding the question of paradoxes. Usually I make a habit of avoiding blanket statements as to my own authorial intent or future plans for anything I write, as I have a disturbing habit of proving myself wrong more often than not. On the question of paradoxes, though, I have no problem in making my opinions clear. I don’t use them. Nor do I ever plan to. Ever.

To some this may seem vaguely heretical. Paradoxes and time travel have been linked so closely over the years that it’s practically become an essential part of the genre. Everyone who dabbles in time travel has had their take on it. Some even argue that fiction about time travel is really all about paradoxes. To these kind of people, the omission of such a vital part of the narrative is a mistake comparable to forgetting to include a protagonist: it simply isn’t done. Even TV shows like Doctor Who, which is ostensibly about a protagonist who does nothing BUT meddle around in history, have had their token episodes warning of the dangers of unleashing a paradox on the world by some small mistake or change made by one of the well meaning protagonists. These kind of stories seem to establish that, while it may not be something we’re constantly presented with, the paradox is a constantly looming threat that may strike at any moment.

Unfortunately the problem is that it’s usually crap.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there has never been a good paradox story written. I’ll admit that I did get a sort of guilty pleasure out of watching the most recent Doctor Who paradox episode, wherein the Doctor’s companion Rose Tyler destroys the universe by saving her father. It made little to no sense in the grand scheme of things, but it did allow for some great character moments and some absolutely brilliant acting on the part of the show’s leads. But the sad fact is that these are the exception rather than the rule.

The first problem with paradox stories these days is that, when it comes down to it, they’re basically just a slight retooling of the old trick where the main character wakes up at the end of the story only to realize that it was all a dream. Every great story centers around conflict, which drives the main characters to action and eventually ends up changing them or the world around them. And yet the standard fare of paradoxes these days seems to take pride in flaunting that old tradition by completely nullifying any change that occurs. It’s the cheapest of tricks, and is generally the first thing that any writer is told to avoid. I suspect that the reason they keep doing it is that a lot of writers have tricked themselves into believing that this is in fact making some kind of profound philosophical statement, and that their readers (or viewers) will be walking away from the experience shaking their head and thinking deep thoughts.

Which brings me to my second problem with paradoxes as a plot device. They’re not profound. Not at all.

I think part of the problem is that the very idea of paradoxes were first raised by philosophers before being co-opted by science fiction writers. Writers, myself included in most cases, are usually laymen playing at being experts. They learn just enough about the subject their writing about to establish a veneer of credibility. But when it comes down to it no wholly sane person really expects a diagram from a Star Trek technical manual to work in real life. But philosophers, well, they’re experts in paradoxes. They get paid to sit around and make sense of circular logic and complex ideas. And so, automatically, they get more attention when they say that something bears consideration.

The problem is that most of these philosophers were raising these paradoxes as reasons for why the time travel stories being presented to them were patently ludicrous. Their inclusion in so much of time travel fiction wasn’t so much a move towards verisimilitude as it was putting up a huge flag saying “THIS NARRATIVE IS IMPOSSIBLE!” And in trying to make the stories work anyway, they only ended up creating a whole lot of confusion. Ultimately it seems this confusion was mistaken for some kind of greater meaning. And, being writers, most of the group simply decided to run with it.

Which brings me to the third and final point I’ll raise as to why temporal paradoxes simply don’t work for me. As a matter of course, the audience is requested to simply sit back and accept that what they see in front of them is possible in the odd sort of hyper-reality that fiction operates in. For the most part I would say that suspension of disbelief is a good thing. No one can every get every detail right in fiction, and if they spend too much time trying to get the minutiae nailed down the narrative usually ends up suffering for it.

The problem comes in when you consider that the very label of paradox highlights it as an impossible thing. To fully suspend your disbelief regarding a paradox, you essentially need to stop thinking. And while that does work very well for some forms of entertainment, in science fiction this is equivalent to suicide. Sci-Fi has always been a genre relying very heavily on allegory. When done right it casts familiar human characters into a vastly different set of trials and tribulations in an often unfamiliar setting, and thus works to strip away the influence of the real world to more fully explore who we are. And you simply cannot interpret this allegory if you are being requested to not think about it.

Many writers have tried to counter this problem by giving complex explanations of how paradoxes aren’t supposed to happen, but cause a great deal of damage if they do. Thus, they explain, it’s vital that you try to stop these paradoxes whenever they rear their ugly head. And they inevitably do, creating millions of new paradoxes without even a second thought. I’ve yet to hear one good explanation from one of these writers as to how you deal with the problems of conservation of mass or energy when you’ve got molecules existing in two places at the same time. What’s even more infuriating is the fact that they all tend to use the same explanations anyway, leaving the audience with nothing they haven’t seen a hundred times before.

Once upon a time, long ago, the idea of a paradox was a new and challenging concept. It offered writers a chance to experiment with a new kind of story, one where the ability of man to truly control his destiny was constantly being challenged, and all our heroes humbled. But that time has passed. And every time I see a writer spit out another repackaged paradox story I can’t help but feel like we are becoming more and more creatively bankrupt. It’s time we put it to rest. Fortunately, despite the common misconception, there is more to the concept of time travel than how we can kick physics in the groin and steal it’s lunch money. In my next installment, I’ll explain to the few readers still interested at this point how I choose to do it.

Darth Maul really got a pretty raw deal.
I know, I’m hardly the first person to say this, but it bears repeating nonetheless. Consider the marketing that lead up to the release of this film. Darth Maul was freaking everywhere, glowering down at filmgoers in a grim promise of how uncompromisingly awesome he was going to be. The guy had a cadre of devoted fans before the movie even opened.
Given how it turned out, I sometimes have to wonder if perhaps they went so far overboard with the marketing as an apology to Ray Park for how little screen time he actually ended up getting.

Unfortunately, I can also see why it happened. Darth Maul’s not actually the villain of the film. Palpatine is. Darth Maul’s just an enforcer. And he actually fills that role pretty well. Audiences don’t expect the two hundred pound gorilla who serves as a bouncer/bodyguard for the mob boss to be a richly developed character. But, like Boba Fett before him, Darth Maul looked really cool. Thus everyone really, really wanted him to be more awesome than he actually was.

So how do you fix this? Basically, you do it by almost completely cutting Palpatine out of the film. Which you may be surprised to hear I almost hate saying.

Now, I am a big fan of Rod Hilton’s machete order for viewing the Star Wars films. If you haven’t read the original article yet, go there now. It’s worth a look, and is an excellent demonstration of how making relatively minor changes to the plot structure of the story as a whole can actually improve both trilogies. And one of the things that he highlights in it that makes the whole concept work is the fact that Palpatine is actually a really freaking scary villain in the prequels.

Think about it: the guy not only managed to engineer a war, he managed to engineer it in such a way that he was actually leading both sides. In addition to that he managed to get the Jedi to break their long-standing prohibition against getting actively involved in military conflicts, leading to the corruption and ultimate destruction of the entire order save for a few stragglers who went into seclusion, and he did it all without ever being so much as suspected of being a Sith. Even at the end when he was revealed it was because he flat out admitted it to a Jedi. This is the villain we really wanted. But sadly many people rejected him because, well, he was an old guy in a robe. He didn’t look cool, and no amount of awesome evil voice work was going to sway people’s minds in that regard.

By letting Darth Maul have Palpatine’s (or more accurately Darth Sideous’s) scenes and lines though we achieve two goals. The first is that we are no longer disappointing fans looking for a scary and awesome looking villain. The second is that Darth Maul can now actually be present in person at Naboo, running things directly. Which is greatly preferable to just having Sideous sending instructions via hologram the entire time. There’s a reason Darth Vader always lead from the front, and it has everything to do with how the audience reacts to seeing a menacing super-powered badass ready to step in when the army of useless stormtroopers inevitably fail.

So would this change diminish Palpatine? Well, maybe. Frankly though I think it would be worth it and possibly only serve to make him more threatening in the second and third films if you mostly cut him out of the first simply by letting the threat of him loom a bit. After all most Star Wars fans knew he was the emperor going in. Letting him be there but apparently not doing much would set everyone wondering just what plans he might have in place, or even if he was actually a sith yet. It would also help close the plot hole formed when the captured Trade Federation leaders didn’t immediately turn around and announce that, yes, they were taking instructions from a creepy guy in a cloak who referred to Darth Maul as an apprentice, and could we please not get shot now? In fact you could even capitalize on it by having a scene where the Jedi are questioning them about Maul trying to find if he was the master or the Apprentice. All of them say that he was running the show, except perhaps for one who offers an opinion that he thought Maul might have been getting instructions from somewhere else. Or if that’s too much just give him some last words, perhaps a barely coherent plea to his master for help. In short, give us a little bit of mystery here as to what the balance of power is.

And with that out of the way, that only leaves the side characters… oof.

So first off, R2-D2. In an early draft he was actually supposed to be the POV character, recounting the history of the Skywalker family from his own experiences to an advanced being hundreds if not thousands of years after the battle of Yavin. And, even though that was dropped, he actually fills that role really well. He’s the perfect fly on the wall character – always present yet usually ignored. To paraphrase the awesome HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic, “Droids are like furniture. No one thinks much about them. Which makes it the perfect surprise when the lamp in the corner pulls out a high powered blaster combine and liquidates them.” So how does the quirky little astromech do?

Actually, pretty well. R2-D2 is more or less perfectly handled in The Phantom Menace. This time he’s brand new, and obviously a bit more capable as a result of it, but frankly what else did we expect? I imagine he’s pretty far out of warranty by the time A New Hope rolls around.

And C-3PO. The overly polite slightly prissy protocol droid who really has no business being in a war. In this movie, he’s presented to us as a naked do-it-yourself project in some kid’s bedroom.

And again, I really don’t have a problem with it. I actually think it’s kind of a good twist on the character that 3PO, who always made a point of bragging about the features he had to everyone he met, was actually cobbled together from spare parts and junk. As for the alleged plot hole of why Vader never recognized him… should he? How often did they actually interact in the original trilogy? And, if you think about it, how many identical protocol droids are out there? The fact that C-3PO and R2 were able to pretend to be droids belonging to the Death Star in a New Hope suggests that there were probably quite a few gold-plated protocol droids and blue astromechs on board the station, so seeing a droid that was identical to C-3PO was probably a daily occurrence.

Which leaves… which leaves…
(sigh)
Jar-Jar.

Okay. Well, first off we should be asking a very important question: does he even need to be here?

No, he doesn’t. At no point are his actions vital to the plot. Taking them to the Gungan city? Naboo has been populated for long enough that I’m pretty sure that the humans know the Gungans are there. Leading the Gungan forces? We’ve already got a Gungan officer character who can do that. Comic relief? You do realize you have a naked C-3PO in this movie, right? And a sarcastic snarky Obi-Wan? Enough said.

So yeah, my thoughts (unsurprisingly) is that this is a character that simply does not need to be here. If you really wanted to keep him though, I would actually suggest taking a page from the Clone Wars series currently wrapping up on Cartoon Network. There they make the simple change of having the disaster that follows in his wake due not to him being mind-numbingly stupid and cowardly, but simply profoundly unlucky. In which case you could make his introduction more the result of the Gungans trying to snub Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon by offering them a guide that they feel will be a hindrance. But honestly, the movie would be well served by just getting rid of him completely.

So tweaking Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon was really mostly an exercise in fine tuning. While there may have been a few areas where the script stumbled, their characters were actually handled pretty well. Unfortunately the same could not be said for Anakin Skywalker, aka the reason everyone was watching this mess of a film.

For the three people in the world who don’t know how this turned out, Anakin Skywalker in the Phantom Menace is the most adorable cherub of a future despot ever born into slavery. The only reason he’s not constantly highlighted as the film’s greatest mistake is the fact that he so often shares screen time with Jar Jar Binks.

Now I get what George Lucas wanted to do here. He wanted us to see that Anakin was a good kid, that evil can come from anywhere, etc. And you know what, he’s right, it was important to establish that. With subtlety. This Anakin is about as subtle as driving a screw with a sledgehammer. So how do we address this issue?

First off, and this should have been a no-brainer, Anakin needs to be older. Making him so young was a huge misstep that ended up making every single character who meets him into a horrible person. The responsible Qui-Gon becomes a self-centered mess of an adult willing to endanger a kid at the drop of a hat so long as he can get something out of it, Padme becomes uncomfortably pedophilic in every romantic scene that she has with him, and Obi-Wan ends up looking like the single worst Jedi Master to ever pick up a lightsaber for somehow managing to turn the living personification of cuteness and light into Darth Vader. Even R2-D2 takes a hit for letting the kid fly straight into what is essentially a suicide mission.

Adding another ten years or so would have immediately fixed so many of the problems with Anakin’s characterization that I’m almost tempted to stop there. But that would be ignoring the other problem with him – namely the fact that he’s got to be the most cheerful slave child ever shown on screen.

Slavery in the Star Wars universe has always been a bit of a sticking point with me. Not only because it’s just casually there, but because even the people we are supposed to view as the enlightened good guys are perfectly happy keeping slaves in the form of droids. And yet this is never confronted in the movies. And given that, I feel that making Anakin a slave was actually a rather brilliant move, both because it explains where Anakin’s fall began and provides the perfect excuse to finally confront this massive elephant in the room.

Anakin as he is does neither. He and his mother, slaves of a master who’s shown to be rather poor, live in a home that seems rather nice by Tatooine standards and apparently have enough disposable income to share food with whoever happens by and build droids and pod racers in their spare time. Lucas’s version of slavery doesn’t seem that bad. I trust I don’t need to explain how monumentally screwed up that is.

Anakin needs to be damaged. He needs to have been shaped by his experiences. In short, he needs to be angry, resentful, and what’s more the audience has to see that he has good reason to feel that way. And you can’t do that if you’re not willing to show the ugly side of slavery. If you’re not willing to show that, you really are better off just dropping the entire slave premise.

My Anakin would be much closer to Vader from the start. Show him as brash, overconfident, and fully willing to abuse the tremendous power he’s discovered he has to try to right the wrongs he’s seen in his life. Let him have grown up hearing stories about the Jedi from his mother, about their supposedly magical abilities and dedication to justice. This way it’s not a innocent boy that Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discover, but a young man who is already trying the hardest he can to be a Jedi even if he is getting so much of it wrong.

As for his mother… honestly I wouldn’t change much. In fact I’d even let her keep her house. I’d just explain that the only reason she has it is that Anakin basically mind-tricked her master into setting her up with a more comfortable life. Let her be the idealistic good hearted woman we saw on the screen, seemingly the one person on that miserable dustball who still believes in the Force and the Jedi. Because this, ultimately, would be the redemptive element for this darker, more dangerous Anakin. The woman who serves as his moral compass and initially inspired him. Only take it further.

The Shimi I envision is part prophet, part social worker. Show her taking care of the rest of the slaves, tending to their wounds, teaching them about the light side and goodness. Bringing hope that they desperately need. Basically just commit to the virgin Mary allegory they fumbled with in the original script. A woman who’s already experienced a miracle and knows that her son will go on to do even more. Which gives her the perfect reason to stay behind when Anakin goes off to become a Jedi.

These changes would not only help this movie, but the following ones as well. Having Anakin already powerful and knowledgeable in the force even before his formal training began gives a reason for his arrogance in Episode II, and having been raised on idealized stories of Jedi nobility would explain his disillusionment with the order by the time Episode III rolls around. And it gives a legitimate reason for the Jedi Council to show hesitation at training him.

From their perspective he’s already started down the path to the dark side, too set in his ways to ever fully embrace the Jedi code. Perhaps even have them conclude that while it may be his destiny to bring balance to the force, he will do so as something other than a Jedi. At which point the story could go one of two ways. The first would be if Obi-Wan, young, supremely confident, and willing to believe that anyone can be redeemed steps forward and announces that he will train him. Not Qui-Gon, which robs Obi-Wan of the responsibility for Vader’s fall. This moment would not only restore agency to Obi-Wan, but also give added weight to his warnings to Luke in the original trilogy that Vader may be beyond redemption. The second option is that he stands back, holds his silence, and then after Qui-Gon’s death comes to Anakin and offers to train him in secret. Ideally after a scene where Qui-Gon suggests to him that there is more to being a Jedi than being a member of the order.

I can see advantages to both sides, and honestly am torn on which would make for a better story, but I find myself more drawn to the latter approach. Having Anakin trained in secret would have the advantage of explaining why his name wasn’t common knowledge in the time of the original trilogy. It would also further establish him as an outsider with perhaps an overly idealized vision of what the Jedi were, one they ultimately failed to live up to. Finally it would give him an out for his relationship with Padme. As he was not a member of the order, the requirement of celibacy was not imposed on him, thus he could pursue the relationship without compromising his vows, only to have it become a point of conflict for him later when, as an adult, he is recognized as a Jedi and properly inducted into the order.

And that’s pretty much it for Anakin. Only one more part now, focusing on the Villains, the side characters, and the most challenging thing of all… Jar-Jar.

Ah, Episode 1. Possibly one of the biggest disappointments cinema has ever produced. The film that actually made people nostalgic for the days when the most embarrassing things about Star Wars was the Ewoks, and we thought that C-3PO’s lowest point was having his ass handed to him by Salacious Crumb.

And this is the first movie I’m going to do in this segment. Well, I suppose there are weirder ways to find out that you’re an online masochist. I can’t imagine there are many though. Given the enormity of the issues with this particular film, I’ve decided to break it up into a few more manageable chunks. Fortunately the film lends itself rather well to this, as each character is pretty much given a discrete story arc within the movie.

Okay, so, let’s start at the most basic level. The premise. Let’s face it, the prequels are essentially just an origin story for Darth Vader. No secret has ever been made of this. And you know what, it works. I know a lot of people have complained that we shouldn’t know more about Vader’s backstory, but that’s not a view I’ve ever held. There’s some rich character development there. What’s more, Vader’s gradual corruption parallels the fall of the republic perfectly, particularly in the fact that it was the hubris of Obi-Wan, the man who literally first showed the audience what it was to be a Jedi, that allowed it to happen.

Which brings me to the first issue. The Obi-Wan in the film is introduced to us as a padawan. Not only that, but a surpremely humble one. Qui-Gon is the one who takes the center stage here.

Now I have no issue with Qui-Gon. In fact I like him a lot. But the unfortunate fact is that while he’s around, Obi-Wan really doesn’t have much of anything to do. He’s almost reduced to a supporting character, overshadowed by his master.

This problem isn’t limited to Obi-Wan either. Darth Maul, also, is completely overshadowed by Palpatine, which is problematic both because it gives Darth Maul nothing to do and because for Palpatine to act so directly is very much out of character for how he’s presented. He’s a puppet master, yes, but he uses extremely powerful and capable pawns to be his public front. Both can be addressed.

My version of the film would start much the same way with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan heading to Naboo, much the same as it does in the film except for a few changes. First, Obi-Wan is a full Jedi Knight, fresh from his trials, and perhaps slightly annoyed (though still respectful) at Qui-Gon’s presence, as he sees it as a sign that he’s not entirely trusted to handle what should be a simple negotiation. They arrive on the flagship and are taken to a conference room. Only this time instead of being outed by a droid, Darth Maul, already physically present and apparently in control of the blockade, is the one to detect them. As the force is a two way street he immediately orders them killed before they can reveal him, against the protests of his trade federation allies. They then escape, reach Naboo, and rescue the queen. Except this time while Obi-wan goes to escort the queen, Qui-Gon stays behind to try to protect the people of Naboo and investigate Maul’s involvement.

This serves two purposes. The first is to give Qui-Gon a plot that doesn’t require Obi-Wan to wait around on a starship doing nothing. Second is that it sets up a precedent useful for the rest of the series, as Qui-Gon’s investigation of the Sith has the unintended consequence of turning the Jedi peacekeeper into the general of a rebellion – further explaining how the Jedi transitioned into an officer corps by the second movie.

Which then takes us to the next issue in the script: Anakin Skywalker.
Anakin pretty much needs to be redone from scratch. A lot of people have said that he shouldn’t be likeable. I don’t agree. He should absolutely be likeable, otherwise you don’t feel anything when you see him fall. What he shouldn’t be is cute. And that’s exactly what Anakin is in the Phantom Menace.

The Anakin the film needed would be more like Han Solo. Arrogant, brash, and even a little evil from time to time. In a sense someone who is only as good as his surroundings will allow him to be. Next time, we’ll take a look at how the Skywalker family might have been improved.